Google's Chromebook laptops have proven to be quite successful for the company, but now they want to move beyond the low-end market of laptops and take on Apple's MacBook Air; the leader of the high-end, high-quality, market.

When Google first announced their Chromebook project—a browser based OS that could run on low-end (read cheap) laptops—there was much laughter in the tech world but in the years that have followed that announcement the Chromebook has made some real progress as a viable alternative for a growing number of people.

Today, however, Google has once again thrown down the gauntlet and set their sights on consumers that typically would be buying the Apple MacBook Air. At a media event today, Sundar Pinchai, Google's SVP of Chrome and Apps, showed off the new Chromebook Pixel with a display to rival that of Apple's MacBook Air – and a price to match.

According to Pinchai, the Pixel comes with a Gorilla Glass multi-touch screen, 12.85-inch 2560×1700 display, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 32GB solid state drive, and for good measure they are throwing in 1TB of Google Drive cloud storage which is free for three years. It also comes equipped with an Intel core i5 processor and three microphones built directly in the laptop to help with noise cancelation for all your Google Hangout or Skype calls.

Pinchai said that the Chromebook Pixel is available starting today in the Google Play store and that the company is working with Best Buy to have it available in 10 locations in the US where you can try out the new laptop.

Now, here comes the real kicker – the price.

Are you sitting down?

The WiFi only version of the Pixel will set you back $1,299 and the LTE enabled version of the laptop will be $1,499.